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February 2010 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?
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Posted by sylviatexas z8a Tx (My Page) on Tue, Feb 2, 10 at 16:49
bunch of old paperback books that I tore into pieces
(don't holler at me:
I'm a book lover, too, but these were *very* old & brittle & I'd already read them & don't want to re-read them, & they were in such bad shape that nobody else would have let them in the house!)
hint:
paperback books will tear more easily if you soak 'em in water first.
cold coffee, warm Coke, leftover cooking water
used tea bags & coffee grounds & filters |
Follow-Up Postings:
RE: February 2010 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?
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| This morning I finally tossed the christmas table centerpeice into the compost pile. The evergreens and berries were dried to a nice brown crisp. Of course it dropped needles all the way to the pile. I also tossed in some wrinkly grapes, a few scraps of moldy bread, along with the mandatory banana and kiwi peels. |
RE: February 2010 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?
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| One 1/8" long fingernail that chipped. :-( boo hoo ;-) Yesterday, a dried out floral bouquet (which I carried intact to the bin so it only shed a bit on the snow covered ground), and the usual coffee grounds, banana peels, egg shells, orange rind, and veggie trimmings. Oh, and a bunch of DH's hair that I trimmed. |
RE: February 2010 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?
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| This might belong on the Compost Wacko thread, but I wonder if people feel a sort of attachment to the land or to the earth when they contribute something like fingernails, hair, or, as I did last summer, blood? Like on one of the threads when a couple of people said that their favorite old gardening shirts would always be with them;
is it comforting to think that we'll always be with our soil? I my own self think it's very nice. |
RE: February 2010 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?
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| Crushed eggshells, coffee grounds, & carrot tops. |
February 2010 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?
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I must be on an OCD book craze;
today, I tore up & fed the compost a bunch of those obnoxious cards that fall out of every magazine. |
RE: February 2010 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?
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| If the paper back books were the 'hot & steamy' kind, are they a green or a brown? Today my pile got - starbuck's best, shredded newspaper soaked in a bucket of cooking water and kitchen waste, my hair and nail trimmings, dryer 'fluf' and another dose of horse poo. Just in time for some lovely rainy weather ... I may have to cover the pile, if too much rain.[in SoCal, we don't know how to say "too much rain", but this may be the year!] |
RE: February 2010 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?
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kitchen scraps from home
kitchen scraps from work
used espresso grinds (I love crumbling those hockey pucks)
weeds steamy, steamy, steamy! |
RE: February 2010 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?
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| barb, I think they're a brown no matter how hot & steamy, LOL! |
RE: February 2010 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?
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| Rose petals, unneeded papers as I get ready for taxes (boo), junk mail, toilet paper rolls, green onion stems, and potato peels. Also, has anyone else composted orange peels at the same time as onions? Not a good smell! The two refuse to blend. It's just wierd. :/ Kim |
RE: February 2010 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?
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| Goopy bottle tree leaves and guck from the rain gutter, sliced limes, a sliced oro blanco grapefruit, wilted carrots, coffee grounds and some dog hair tumbleweeds. I'll be juicing later, so there will be blood orange and tangelo peels soon. |
RE: February 2010 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?
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| 1 Quart of yeast sludge from the bottom of our home brew bucket. I figured it couldn't hurt... |
RE: February 2010 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?
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| The cracked-apart and crunched-up remains of a tasty dungeness crab, a jar of frighteningly old (though still radioactive red) maraschino cherries, a bunch of the DW's sneezed-into tissues from her cold, and the usual assortment of the day's coffee grounds, tea bags, kitchen waste, and clumps of moss that our new puppy believes belong inside. |
RE: February 2010 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?
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| i got peanut shells--grapefruit--[school fundraiser]--and i gotta line my cages with a plastic wrap to keep the good stuff in----- anybody got any experience with the plastic lining on a compost bin---its a lining used for deck screens and such--- it really holds the good stuff from slippin thru the cracks--- we gettin snow overnight---whole state of alabama will shut down in a huge panic---buy milk and bread stocks!!! gotta go pee on the pile and watch the school closings to see if my kids gotta go in the AM JB |
February 2010 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?
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| SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW SNOW! not just in the compost pile;
it's everywhere, about 11" or 12" worth. never ever in my whole life has this Texas native seen anything like this! (& I have a new sympathy for Northern gardeners/composters/drivers of cars!) Tomorrow, I'll add a couple of broken limbs & 3 or 4 days worth of kitchen stuff.
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RE: February 2010 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?
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..
One dead rat and one dead squirrel. Happy about neither. On top of that, hair, nail clippings, oranges and lemons, grass clippings, leaves, shredded office paper and chipper shredder stuff.
.. |
RE: February 2010 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?
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| Used coffee grounds, grass clippings, and...... |
Here is a link that might be useful: THIS
RE: February 2010 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?
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| Since I don't turn my piles - it takes longer. I put a 'worm-sky-box' on top of one pile next to a fence. about 15 inches of soil - infused with earthworms dug up in the neglected side yard where extra mulch and horse manure are stockpiled. The 'master plan' is that the earth worms will slowly make excursions into the pile, but have the dirt sky-box to retreat to, if pile gets too hot. This is slow-turning to the max. :) |
RE: February 2010 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?
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RE: February 2010 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?
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| heirloomjunkie - thanks. It was alot of work constructing this. EG |
RE: February 2010 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?
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| woo hoo! It was finally in the 40's today, and I got to go out and turn my thawed piles while simultaneously breaking in my new rubber boots. bliss. Today... oatmeal, banana peels, shredded paper I dug out of the garbage, and those cardboard sleeves on the cups at SB. Kim |
RE: February 2010 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?
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Three huge black garbage bags of rabbit bedding
An equally big bag of sawdust
A gigantic heap of wild onion plants Turn Turn Turn |
RE: February 2010 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?
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| a first for me: twiggy parts of crepe myrtle limbs *that broke under the weight of snow*! Never never never happened before in my whole life. hope it never does again...brrrrr.
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RE: February 2010 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?
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| I have added about 4-5yds of Fresh horse manure with bedding to one pile and going to start another one tomorrow with another 5yds plus. The manure was free from 2 differnt places. But know I owe my friend big time because he hauled it for me with his dump truck. |
February 2010 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?
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more twiggy stuff from fallen limbs
coffee grounds/filters
used teabags, both commercial & "personal"
junk mail
banana peels
apple cores
eyebrow pencil shavings (does this belong on this thread or on "You Might Be A Compost Wacko"?) |
RE: February 2010 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?
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| Lots and lots of citrus peel chunks left over from making fresh juice, coffee grounds, wilted carrots and assorted odds and ends from cleaning out the fridge. |
RE: February 2010 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?
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- The clippings from the first lawn mowing of the year
- The pruned-off dead bits from the eggplants and chilis that survived the winter
- Last year's dead tomato plants
- The "Black Beauty" eggplants I decided to rip out
- A whole bunch of oleander leaves
- Sawdust-based kitty litter
- A dead dove
- Anything raked up from where the tomato plants used to be
In short, anything that will decompose goes into the compost, not the city trash bin. |
RE: February 2010 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?
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| Bit of a morbid question here, but how long does a dove take to compost?? I was talking about just this kind of thing with my mom the other day - how long it would take, whether it would be a brown or a green. I was fascinated. She, unfortunately, now questions my sanity. :) |
RE: February 2010 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?
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| don't know how long it would take, but I'd either bury it or put it deep in the center of the pile & leave it for a long time. |
RE: February 2010 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?
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| I would consider a dove, a green. Time to decompose depends upon many factors. IME, dove composition would take longer than a banana peel, but not as long as a phone book. |
RE: February 2010 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?
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| Heirloomjunkie - Buried about a foot into a pile of wood chips, a chicken will compost to bones in about 3 weeks. Because I use 'slow" methods, I never know how long it took, but I never find the corpses when I'm sifting compost a year later. |
RE: February 2010 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?
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RE: February 2010 What Have You Fed Your Compost Today?
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O.K. NO morbid here, not today. Finally, finally, finally, I was to the pile today. In one spot the snow was still waist deep. Like the trooper I am I broke a path the UCG and filters I have saved during February, have a new home in the pile (no bin). Corn screenings form corn stove fuel went out also. Hooraah!
Curt ;) |
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